Jesse Kline: The spy who read my email

A number of years ago, I visited an American diplomat in China. It was taken for granted that Chinese authorities likely had his apartment bugged. There was no question that Internet communications were also monitored, and some sites actively censored.

Knowing that a spook could be listening in on my conversations, or even following me around town, made me appreciate the privacy I enjoyed as a free citizen living in the West. But as former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has shown us, that privacy was largely an illusion.

For years, the NSA and its partners in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — collectively known as the Five Eyes — have been gaining access to the computer systems that house our email, social networks and other online communications services. They have been breaking encryption protocols, listening to phone calls and scooping up unfathomable amounts of data as it travels across international borders.

When the Snowden documents began to be released six months ago, we were told by government officials and supporters of mass surveillance that we had nothing to worry about: The programs were only being used to gather information about terrorists. This turned out to be a lie, as we have since learned that the NSA has gathered data on millions of innocent Americans. As have many of the other spy agencies in the Five Eyes alliance.

We also know the NSA has targeted friendly foreign governments, including tapping the cellphone of the German Chancellor and spying on the Brazilian Prime Minister. There is also evidence that the U.S. gathered information on Brazil’s state-owned oil company, which would potentially have given the government access to sensitive information about an upcoming auction of offshore oil rights.

We also found out, through a PowerPoint presentation leaked by Snowden, that the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) has spied on the Brazilian Mines and Energy Ministry, gathering detailed metadata about who the agency was communicating with, as well as gaining access to its internal emails.

Part of the problem seems to be that we have set up such an all-encompassing surveillance apparatus, with so few safeguards in place, that it becomes too easy to gather information on just about anyone. Tap Angela Merkel’s cellphone? Why not? Share information about private citizens? What’s stopping us?

So what to make of the report that CSEC worked with the NSA to conduct surveillance operations during the G8 summit in Huntsville, Ont., and the G20 in Toronto? Much of the document obtained, and subsequently released, by the CBC, details how the American intelligence operation intended to protect against potential threats. This is what we should expect spy agencies to do at large international events that host the U.S. President, the Canadian Prime Minister and other foreign leaders.

The more worrying passages discuss how NSA support could be used to “further U.S. policy goals” — i.e., spy on other countries to gain a leg-up in negotiations — and work “closely” with its “Canadian partner.” The latter is troubling because it may, in fact, be illegal.

“If CSEC tasked NSA to conduct spying activities on Canadians within Canada that CSEC itself was not authorized to take, then I am comfortable saying that would be an unlawful undertaking by CSEC,” University of Ottawa security expert Craig Forcese told the CBC. Even CSEC Chief John Forster and Defence Minister Rob Nicholson confirmed the agency is not allowed to spy on Canadian soil, or to ask foreign spy agencies to do so.

The idea that the NSA and CSEC are being used to provide “policy support” is also troubling. It’s one thing to use spies to find out if terrorists are planning to attack an event; it’s quite another to eavesdrop on the French delegation to ascertain their position on aid to Africa.

What we don’t know is if spying to further economic and policy goals has always been commonplace, or if this is something new. But we do know that CSEC, and its sister organization CSIS, have expanded greatly since 9/11.

In 1999, CSEC had a budget of $100-million and a staff of 900. Today it employs 2,100 people and spends roughly $500-million a year. That’s on top of the $1-billion glass structure being built in Ottawa to house the agency’s operations. CSIS has also seen its budget balloon from $180-million at the turn of the century, to $535-million today.

There’s no question that we’re doing a lot more spying than ever before. What Canadians don’t know is whether the $1-billion-plus price tag for our spy agencies is money well spent. Are these agencies keeping us safe, or have we built up a top-secret surveillance apparatus that has nothing better to do than spy on our allies and collect personal information on everyone who uses the Internet? Without a greater degree of transparency, the citizens of this democracy are unable to have an informed debate about what types of activities these agencies should be involved in.

We should, however, make a distinction between spying on innocent civilians and spying on other governments. Sovereign countries have the right to collect intelligence on each other and it is no secret that they have been doing so for quite some time. But they’re supposed to be gathering data for national security purposes. They’re not supposed to be spying on their friends or collecting information to give private businesses an advantage over foreign competitors.

Yet some argue we need to spy on other countries, including our friends, because they are likely doing the same to us.

“And yet there seem to be many Canadians, including not a few in the media and on the opposition benches, who think that such behaviour is somehow beneath us; that Canada owes the world better than what we would expect from it in return. Nonsense,” wrote my colleague Matt Gurney in the National Post. “[W]e must also admit we do have interests and those interests must be protected. There is a lot in Canada that others would want, whether it be potash or patents. We’re well within our rights to look after our own interests, and those of our allies.”

This is reminiscent of the arguments heard during the Bush administration over whether the United States should engage in torture. “Breaking the laws of war and abusing civilians are what, to understate the matter vastly, terrorists do for a living. They are entitled, therefore, to nothing,” wrote Charles Krauthammber in 2005.

But not spying on our own citizens and treating enemies, even vile ones, with some degree of humanity is what has traditionally made the West better than countries such as China and the Soviet Union. Since September 11, the United States and many of its allies, including Canada, have cracked down on civil liberties and adopted many of the practices we used to abhor.

The net result is a race to the bottom — a foreign policy where the lowest common denominator determines how even civilized nations behave. Canadians still get mad when we uncover a Russian spy or suspect the Chinese of hacking our computer systems. Just as the Americans get mad when other countries torture political prisoners. But what right do we in the West have to criticize the unethical behaviour of other countries when we have adopted many of the same practices ourselves?

Western countries, such as Canada and the United States, are still some of the best places to live in the world, offering a greater degree of freedom, and superior protections of civil liberties and free speech than many other places. But the ubiquitousness of Internet technologies has centralized our business, personal and financial information in one network. We post intimate details of our lives on social networks using our mobile phones, communicate with friends and family via email and Internet phones, and upload everything to the cloud.

The level of detail governments can obtain about the lives of ordinary people is unprecedented in human history. Where the Internet was once seen as the great liberator — a place where anyone could speak their minds, free from the control of autocratic governments and mass-media gatekeepers — it now has the potential to become, in the words of journalist Glenn Greenwald, “the most effective means of human control and oppression ever known.”

That is what the Snowden leaks have exposed — a massive government operation to archive and analyze all the world’s communications. Opposing the surveillance state, and demanding the right as free citizens to know what our government is doing, is not a left- or a right-wing issue; it is one of tyranny versus liberty; it’s about whether we want to live in a communist-style surveillance state, or enjoy the rights and privileges of a free society.